Mary Lou McDonald
Photo: Newstalk.com In government, Sinn Féin will disappoint and entrench the growing divide between many of our people and the political class, writes John McGuirk
In a country unused to earthquakes, even the mildest tremor in the ground might feel like the end of the world. When Mount Vesuvius erupted and swept through the Roman town of Pompeii in 79AD, the inhabitants were entirely unprepared, even though the mountain had been smoking and shaking for several weeks. The tremors were so great, in fact, that many residents assumed that it couldn’t get any worse. They were wrong.
At about 8pm on election night, DCU’s Gary Murphy, not a man usually given to hyperbole, declared that Ireland had just had “the most extraordinary election in the history of the State”.
In a way, he wasn’t wrong. The Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties have never both had such a poor election on the same day. For the first time since independence, neither of them was the biggest vote-getter in the election, coming second and third to Sinn Féin. Had Sinn Féin a little more courage, and run more candidates, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would probably have come second and third in terms of seats as well.
Change
When so much change happens, all at once, it’s tempting to think that this is it – that things must now settle down. If politics worked as it should, Government policy would change dramatically to address the concerns of Sinn Féin voters, and we would emerge a happier country.
At the time of writing, it is impossible to be sure, but it seems very likely that by the time this column is published, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin will be well on the way to a marriage that will make Micheál Martin Taoiseach and Mary Lou McDonald the Tánaiste, and de facto boss of the country. Even if events happen differently, Sinn Féin has achieved an extraordinary success. But there is still much upheaval to come.
It’s popular to say that Sinn Féin are the beneficiaries of the failure of the outgoing Government: the crisis in housing and in health; the misery of many commuters; the plague of boarded up rural towns, and de-population in the countryside; the two-tier society that’s emerging, etc.
But those are not uniquely Irish problems. They’ve been slowly afflicting most of the Western world for two decades now. Speak to someone in Yorkshire who voted for Brexit, or someone in Wisconsin who voted for Donald Trump, and you’ll hear many of the same themes that emerge from Sinn Féin voters – alienation from the political class, a sense that politicians no longer represent people, a sense that their country is no longer really theirs.
Perhaps it was that sense of insecurity about who we are that made the proposal to commemorate the Royal Irish Constabulary into such an outpouring of national outrage just six short weeks ago and started the flood of voters towards Sinn Féin.
But identifying the problems, and winning the votes of the alienated, are not the same thing as having the ability to solve those problems. Sinn Féin is a party that preaches radical change – but what if those changes, rather than solving the problems, make them much worse?
Remember, if you will, the media acclaim surrounding the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Mr Obama’s view of the world is not, in many respects, much different from the kind of change Sinn Féin says it wants to deliver. Large scale government interventions in healthcare and infrastructure were the hallmarks of his presidency.
Government spending and taxes went up, but the bubbling discontent under the surface did not ebb away. Some of the issues driving the discontent actually grew in salience – immigration and the effects of globalisation, in particular, and the devastation of rural America.
Sinn Féin in government is likely to try and solve the country’s problems by focusing on the economic discontent of the population – but what if economic matters are merely secondary? Ireland is a country fraying at the edges these days, but that’s not purely economic.
A few days before the election, Sinn Féin’s LGBT spokesman announced that in Government, Sinn Féin would change the law to allow judges, not parents, the final say on whether a child could change its gender from male to female, or vice versa. The party believes wholeheartedly in open borders and no controls on immigration. Some of its leading lights are leftist culture warriors much more concerned with social and cultural issues than matters economic.
The sense of discontent in the country, the detachment between the people, and the politicians, is growing, and it is not all related to economic affairs. Sinn Féin are just people – and they are people without any special answers to the problems in health, and people who can’t wave a magic wand and make people start building houses. In government, they are likely to disappoint on economics, and entrench the growing, but unspoken, divide between many of our people and the political class.
In Ireland last weekend, a whole swathe of populist, right wing independents increased their vote”
In the US, we know what followed Mr Obama. It was not noticed much in the bigger picture, but in Ireland last weekend, a whole swathe of populist, right-wing independents increased their vote, or held their seats comfortably. When people had a credible option to say “we’re not happy with the well-spoken, well-heeled, and well-off political class, including Sinn Féin”, they took it.
Ireland does not have a Donald Trump figure, and may never have. But what it does have are many of the issues that drove voters to Trump in the first place: a growing immigrant population; a declining rural population, growing relatively poorer; an entrenched cultural elite obsessed with things like gender and abortion and gay marriage; and a new left-wing voice, promising hope and change, but likely to deliver disappointment.
Last weekend may have felt like a tremor, but the real earthquake may well be yet to come.